Flipkart’s Sachin Bansal Exits After Acquisition By Walmart

Sachin Bansal, who co-founded India’s largest e-commerce marketplace — Flipkart, and worked as the Chairman of the Flipkart Group, has decided to exit the company post acquisition. The other co-founder, Binny Bansal, who was the Group CEO, will stay on.

The acquisition of Flipkart by Walmart marks first successful exit by a unicorn startup in India. With Sachin Bansal exiting the company, he has sold his stake of around 5.5 percent for a price of around $800 million to $1 billion.

After working as the CEO of Flipkart since its inception, Sachin Bansal was replaced by his co-founder Binny Bansal as CEO in 2016. With that development, Sachin took on the role of an executive chairman. A few months later, Kalyan Krishnamurthy, a senior executive from Flipkart’s largest investor, Tiger Global, who was interim CFO at the ecommerce giant in 2013-14, came back as head of category design.

Later, in January 2017, Kalyan Krishnamurthy was named as the chief executive of Flipkart while Binny Bansal moved on to a bigger role of Group CEO, which consits of all the companies under Flipkart — Flipkart, eKart Logistics, Myntra, Jabong, and PhonePe.

With Walmart taking over, Sachin’s exit from the company has sparked speculations if it was internal politics that led to the move. One industry observer says it could be Sachin not agreeing to Walmart’s terms that led to his exit.

However, there’s also a possibility that Sachin’s decision could be just one to move on too – after laying the foundation stone for e-commerce, inspiring a generation of entrepreneurs.